


A Slave to Your Games

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [4]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Burns, Captivity, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Strong Language, Torture, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-04-05 18:09:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19045690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Companion to ‘A Not So Urban Legend’. The Joker catches Nightwing, and it’s a bad time for everyone; except the Joker, of course.





	A Slave to Your Games

Nightwing wasn’t supposed to be there.  
  
Bruce- Batman- hadn’t wanted him there.  
  
“Look, I can just check it out,” Nightwing had assured him. “I’m already out here, I won’t get too close.”  
  
“ _I don’t want you anywhere near the Joker,_ ” Bruce had responded flatly. “ _He is out of your weight-class._ ”  
  
Nightwing had been taken aback. “But the crocodile-guy wasn’t?”  
  
“ _Not **literally** out of your weight-class. You are not ready for the Joker. You can’t handle the Joker._”  
  
“We don’t even know if he’s part of this! Look, it’s just a peek: I’ll be in and out, and you’ll have some base information to go off on when you come out to look for yourself. If I see any sign of the Joker, I’ll hightail it out of there like a bat out of-”  
  
“ _Don’t say it_.”  
  
Bruce had not explicitly assented: He simply seemed to realize that Nightwing was going to lie and do it anyway if he told him no. John had been getting bolder in defying Bruce in recent weeks, confidence growing as he spent more time as Nightwing. Bruce, obviously, didn’t like it; Nightwing, on the other hand, felt pretty good.  
  
It was hard not to feel good, Nightwing considered as he crept into the warehouse’s window and started sneaking down the aisle between the boxes, when he’d been so successful so far, even against that frigging crocodile asshole. Enough success and even someone like the Joker didn’t seem _nearly_ so terrify-  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
Lights flashed in Nightwing’s eyes, and pain erupted at the back of his skull. He’d fallen to the ground with a grunt, hurt but still conscious. Nightwing reached for his baton, and cried out in pain as a foot came down hard on his wrist, a sharp ‘ _crack!_ ’ sounding from the bones.  
  
“ _Nightwing? Come in. Nightwing, **come in.**_ _Night-_ ”  
  
_CRK._  
  
The Joker’s foot came down onto the earpiece with a crunch that sounded eerily like Nightwing’s cracked wrist.  
  
“Aw, lookie, I found me a _birdie_.”  
  
[---]  
  
The fear that came over Nightwing the moment he realized who this was and what exactly he had gotten himself into, was something deep, something terribly profound; he had grown up knowing who the Joker was as surely as he’d known who the Devil was, or the Boogeyman. But people had joked about the Devil making people do crazy things, or that the Boogeyman was hiding under your bed.  
  
But no one in Gotham ever, ever joked about the Joker.  
  
No one.  
  
Because the Joker was undeniably, uncontrovertibly real.  
  
And he would absolutely come for you.  
  
He watched the Joker pace back and forth, as though the guy didn’t have a vigilante hog-tied on the floor nearby, and Nightwing felt his dread increase considerably. The news hadn’t done the Joker justice; there was a deep, twisted darkness to this guy, something that could only be understood once you were unfortunate enough to meet him.  
  
 “So…” The Joker drawled. “The Bat’s taking recruits now, is he? Gosh, with that level of obsessive devotion I though he’d be more of a…” He spun on his heel and cocked his head down to look at Nightwing, squinting contemplatively. “Solo- _artiste_.”  
  
“Yeah.” Nightwing mumbled, turning his head as best he could to avoid his lips touching the dirty concrete floor.  
  
“So, what, is he-” He made an odd sound, and John realized it was a snort. “-is he getting _old?_ Or has he just gotten, ah- _rusty_ , without me? I doubt that freakshow in the oxygen-mask gave him as much of a workout as I did.”  
  
Nightwing kept his mouth shut. That had been lesson one in Bruce’s ‘Conversing With Maniacs 101’ class: If you don’t have to talk, don’t. And if you do, keep it short and sweet and as vague as humanly possible. The less they knew, the better.  
  
“Ah, tight-lipped. Least you’re not trying that stupid _growl_ the Bat puts on.”  
  
Nightwing held very, very still as the Joker traced the tip of the knife around the edge of his mask, at one point even wriggling the tip beneath it. But in the end, the blade withdrew, and Nightwing was confused. “You aren’t going to take it off?” He rasped.  
  
“Ah- no. No, no. No, no- you see,” The Joker began idly flipping his knife back and forth in one hand with an unnerving fluidity. “I don’t care who you are. You- _you_ don’t interest me, bird-boy. You really don’t. Now, your boss, brother, father, uncle, cousin twice removed, grandfather - _whatever_ the Batman is to you- _he_ is the one that interests me. You?” He waved his free hand like Nightwing was a bug he was trying to shoo away. “No. Not you.”  
  
“Why not?” Nightwing tried to keep his tone light, even though he knew acutely that every moment he spent distracting the Joker was a moment he wasn’t being hurt, and that the second the clown lost interest in the conversation the pain was going to come back.  
  
“Ah, well- How do I put this- You’re _dumb_ , flamingo. Real dumb. I mean, the Bat was never this easy to catch. It’s kind of pathetic.”  
  
“Sorry to disappoint.” Nightwing muttered.  
  
The knife stopped flipping, and the Joker pointed the tip at him as he continued to talk, as though Nightwing hadn’t spoken. “You lack his brain, and really, his _brain_ is the best part of him. It’s the center for all his smarts, his darkness, and his wildly obsessive and pathologically unhealthy behavior. But you…” He twirled his hand lazily, voice laced with something that sounded like disgust. “You don’t have that. You don’t have that. At. All.” His eyes narrowed a bit, and Nightwing flinched as he leaned over and used the tip of the knife to flick a bit of dried blood off of Nightwing’s cheek. “You’re just a mouthy little kid, a wannabe. I want that six-foot tall hunk of screwed-up, loco-in-the-coco bat-man.”  
  
“Yeah, well, he knows where I was going and will probably be here soon, so don’t you worry.” Nightwing’s smile was grim.  
  
“Oh, I’m counting on that.” The Joker laughed that creepy laugh of his, and it catapulted Nightwing back nine years to when the Joker had appeared on TV as he tormented that Batman impersonator. The laugh had chilled him then and it chilled him now, brought him back to a time and place when he still cowered at the big and scary monsters of the world.  
  
_Bruce is coming. Bruce is coming. Bruce is coming. He’s not going to leave you here._  
  
_Not with **him.**_  
  
The thing was, despite all appearances to the contrary, Batman was human.  
  
And Batman only had a general idea as to where exactly Nightwing was.  
  
And so he knew, to his great disappointment and growing fear, that he would be spending some intimate time with the Joker before anyone came to his rescue.  
  
[---]  
  
“Well, I gotta say this, kid- you’ve got endurance!”  
  
It had been at least two hours.  
  
Nightwing felt the scream that had been bubbling up in his throat recede, and he finally felt okay to open his mouth and breathe a bit more deeply.  
  
The Joker had decided to play a fantastic game that he had enthusiastically titled “Make the Birdie Sing”: It consisted of hanging Nightwing upside down from the ceiling and jabbing and slashing at particular points on Nightwing’s body with his knife, seeing which parts made Nightwing growl or, in some cases, scream the loudest. None of the assaults had been deep enough to kill, or even to seriously, grievously injure, but there were currently enough wounds on Nightwing’s body to make blood-loss a very real, immediate concern.  
  
Nightwing had made a point of staying as quiet as possible, refusing to make a sound when he could, and suppressing as much of whatever else came out when he couldn’t. But that fortitude had eroded considerably over the last hour, and more and more grunts and hoarse cries managed to escape his throat before he could smother them. It didn’t help that his head was hurting and his vision was blurring and the sight of his blood pooling on the concrete beneath him was making him nauseous.  
  
Abruptly, the Joker was kneeling next to him again, knife out. It still had smears of Nightwing’s blood on it. “You sound like you’re getting bor- _ed_ , parakeet. If you want, we can go back to playing my game- or a new one. I’m sure I can think of a new one. What are your feelings towards lighter-fluid?”  
  
“Smells funny,” Nightwing wheezed, dimly wishing he could have come up with something wittier.  
  
“Uh, well, _yeah_ ,” The Joker snorted as he pulled a very _large_ can of lighter fluid out and started sloshing it onto Nightwing’s suit; Nightwing caught some in his mouth and coughed and gagged as his mouth burned. _Don’t puke, don’t puke._ “That’s the point of lighter fluid, goose-boy. Discourages people from guzzling it like champagne.” He threw the can aside and, in one fluid movement, whipped out a match and lit it, grinning wickedly.  
  
Nightwing shuddered.  
  
“Let there be _light._ ”  
  
The Joker threw the match.  
  
As it was, the material that made up Nightwing (and Batman’s) suit was designed to be as flame-retardant as possible: Batman had had his fair share of fire-incidents in the past and didn’t like to take chances. But flame-retardant material only went so far, and the fire was aided by the flammable fluid currently coating the suit as well.  
  
Nightwing could feel the heat of the flame, and knew immediately when the flame began to eat through the suit and sear his skin; the discomfort grew to terrible, burning agony, and now Nightwing _did_ scream in pain, writhing on the chain that kept him suspended above the ground. There was no way to put it out, no way for him to roll over and smother the flames before they could grow. Smoke began to rise, and Nightwing coughed violently, struggling to breathe-  
  
_- **shing!**_  
  
**_SNAP._**  
  
Nightwing fell to the floor as his vision began to darken.  
The last thing he saw was a tall, broad shadow advancing on the Joker.  
  
[---]  
  
John awoke, and knew immediately that his mask was off.  
  
The surface below him was hard, probably metal. He tried to move, and suddenly Alfred was pushing him back down.  
  
“Is he dead?”  
  
“You should sleep, Master John.”  
  
“Is he dead?”  
  
“Master Bruce is fine.”  
  
“I know he is. I mean the Joker.”  
  
“You’re safe here. Sleep.”  
  
That was a no.  
  
The Joker lived.  
  
And John did not sleep.  
  
[---]  
  
John jerked awake, slapping at the mattress and pillow beneath him as he forced himself up-  
  
_Shit!_  
  
-and then immediately lowered himself down again.  
  
Everything hurt. _Everything._  
  
What wasn’t burnt was sliced to ribbons, and what wasn’t sliced to ribbons was bruised and broken. He didn’t know how much had been burned or how much blood he’d loss, but John felt like he’d been hit by a truck. He laid in bed and grimaced as the thousands of little pains created a greater blanket of misery that settled on top of him, oppressing him.  
  
He remembered the night before, remembered the Joker’s maniacal cackling and the lighter fluid and the constant _bird_ names, and John had a little trouble breathing. It was a wonder he hadn’t had nightmares about it; he would eventually, though. It was inevitable. The only thing that kept him together was recognizing his surroundings and knowing he was back at the manor.  
  
After an indeterminable amount of time, there was a knock on the door. When it opened, Bruce entered with his usual brooding look, hands in his pockets. “How are you?”  
  
John carefully pushed himself up onto his elbows, trying not to make it obvious how much pain he was in. “Fine.”  
  
Bruce arched an eyebrow at him.  
  
“I’m _fine_ , Bruce,” John snapped.  
  
Bruce shrugged, strolling over to a chair against the wall and sitting down. “Fine,” He echoed pointedly. “Need anything?”  
  
“What happened to the Joker?”  
  
“He’s in custody.”  
  
“That won’t last long.”  
  
“Arkham’s gotten good at holding the likes of him.”  
  
“Sure do hope so.”  
  
“We’ll be there if they can’t.”  
  
[---]  
  
(John is sleeping. Passed out, really.  
  
Bruce is watching.  
  
The single lowest point of his time as Batman- so far, anyway- was when Bane broke his back and left him in that prison. Bruce had been thrown to rock-bottom and been forced to crawl his way back up, literally and figuratively.  
  
He suspects, with no small amount of dread, that John has had his Bane moment tonight.  
  
Bruce will have to watch him carefully.  
  
Bane’s effect on him had been as psychological as it had been physical, and the Joker had a way of leaving even deeper psychological wounds than physical ones.  
  
The Joker has a way of making everything worse for everyone but himself.  
  
So Bruce sits, and watches, and stays nearby in the event that John wakes up and needs him.  
  
Just in case.)  
  
-End


End file.
